The Speculist

Via Kurzweil AI, Space.com is running a series of articles on a SETI proposal to perform the famous double-slit experiment over interstellar distances. The experiment will show that quantum effects are not just microscopic or localized phenomena. The first article in the series provides a good summary of how truly strange the quantum picture of the world is:

This, the simplest of quantum weirdness experiments, has been the basis of many of the unintuitive interpretations of quantum physics. We can see, perhaps, how physicists might conclude, for example, that a particle of light is not a particle until it is measured at the screen. It turns out that the particle of light is rather a wave before it is measured. But it is not a wave in the ocean-wave sense. It is not a wave of matter but rather, it turns out that it is apparently a wave of probability. That is, the elementary particles making up the trees, people, and planets -- what we see around us -- are apparently just distributions of likelihood until they are measured (that is, measured or observed). So much for the Victorian view of solid matter!

The shock of matter being largely empty space may have been extreme enough -- if an atom were the size of a huge cathedral, then the electrons would be dust particles floating around at all distances inside the building, while the nucleus, or center of the atom, would be smaller than a sugar cube. But with quantum physics, even this tenuous result would be superseded by the atom itself not really being anything that exists until it is measured. One might rightly ask, then, what does it mean to measure something? And this brings us to the Uncertainly Principle first discovered by Werner Heisenberg. Dr. Heisenberg wrote, “Some physicist would prefer to come back to the idea of an objective real world whose smallest parts exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist independently of whether we observe them. This however is impossible."

Stephen and I were chatting about probability the other night. The specific topic was video poker, which I sometimes play virtually while doing other things (e.g., sitting on conference calls.) When I say I play virtually, I mean that there is no real money involved. I play with fictional, electronic dollars, but the games are (presumably) the same as they would be if real dollars were at stake. That presumption is borne out by the fact that I generally loose. Stephen opined that he would never play a game where the odds are stacked against him, which is the case with any typical Las Vegas casino game. The one exception might be Black Jack dealt from a one-deck shoe; the conventional wisdom is that a sufficiently skilled card-counter can work the odds to his advantage in that setting.

I wonder whether the appeal of games of chance isn't built into us at some fundamental level? We ourselves are clusters of probabilites, our lives are an ongoing series of likelihoods (and unlikelihoods) that we have to negotiate. Celebrating out fourth wedding anniversary last night, my wife and I talked about how vanishingly unlikely it was that she and I would ever meet — much less begin dating, fall in love, and get married. From the vantage point of the past, my present life is very unlikely indeed.

So the choice we have to face is whether we are going to let the probabilities grind us along, as I do when playing video poker, or whether we're going to try to "rig" the game in our favor, as Stephen insists we must do in order to make the game worthwhile. I think most of us are with Stephen. I know I am. Here are some of my original thoughts on this subject. I think the subject is worthy of more attention.

Here are some of my earlier thoughts on how we might rig the game.

What's a Speculist?
Practical Time Travel
Divvying up the Future
Types of Future
i Space
Reality's Flashlight
And Now the Extremely Good News
Give Yourself a Present
Roots of the Modern World